


Tactile

by Hooda



Series: Anthology [2]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hands, Jyn has a thing for Cassian coming back for her, Touch is important after a lifetime of cold, they each search for something in their lives without realizing what it is, troubled childhoods
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-11
Updated: 2017-04-11
Packaged: 2018-10-17 13:45:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10595226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hooda/pseuds/Hooda
Summary: For so long they had craved the softness of another, but now they were terrified of losing the contact between the other. She had starved for it since her childhood was stolen from her. He had grasped for it since the first time he held a blaster in his little hands as a boy, fresh from losing his family.





	

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a stressful past couple of weeks, but sometimes writing can take the edge off. Great stress reliever, too :)

All of her life, Jyn has only ever known the feeling of cold fingers on her skin from the touches of liars and strangers. Her mother would come home from days in a laboratory with fingers tinged with cold from the research machinery. Some years later, when Galen finds them a farmstead on Lah’mu, her mother’s hands come home from the days hunched in the fields with hands soaked in mud and freezing sea water. They shook with uncertain terror as they cupped Jyn’s cheeks for the last time, the first lesson to Jyn as they pushed her in the direction of the bunker that she was less important to even her parents.

For a change, Saw’s hand guiding her out of the darkness and onto his lone ship is warm and rough. His fingers were lined with red dust and chaffed from continued exposure. She watched from the lone bench in the hold as his hands carefully navigated the control panel, pushing buttons and finally pulling a lever. Her body shook as the ship sputtered into the atmosphere too quickly for her to even glimpse the coast-line of her home. He whisks her away into a new life of uncertainty and hardships, his hand an ever-guiding presence in her life.

It often pointed her in the direction she needed for advice, but its rough edges also left sharp blows when she came back with fruitless mission reports. Jyn loathes being a disappointment to Saw. It leaves the rancid taste of bile in her throat and a stone of despair settling in her gut. She quickly learns to fight tooth and nail to become the best of what the Partisans can offer. Sometimes, she watches as Saw’s worn hands move the crude little colored blocks across flimsy maps laid out against a board excused as a table, her life slowly becoming more of a statistic to her childhood caregiver than an actual life.

In the end, her hands bleed with the scars of a war he throws her into the midst of; the scars chafe through her gloves and she is forced to cut the tips off to keep her fingers bending. Some nights, especially after a few drinks in her system, Jyn thinks she can ignore the callousness of her knuckles enough to wind her fingers through someone’s hair, their clothes, down their sides as their own hands - cold, always cold from the chilled air of the desert - danced down her own skin.

When she is barely sixteen, he yells for her to hide in the bunker as their temporary base is overrun by impeccable white uniformed soldiers. The last time she feels Saw’s hands on her are as he presses a blaster and knife into her hands, eyes pleading with her with a fondness she rarely ever saw, a look so raw as the door bolts shut behind him.

The memory haunts her as Jyn fights her way through the streets of the stricken city, searching, searching, searching for the father that was never a father that left her. Sometimes, if she focuses hard enough, she can still imagine the cold brush of his thumb over her brow as he promised to come back for her when the dust settled.

Two weeks later without a single Partisan sighting leaves her screaming herself hoarse in the bunker where she hides away like a rat every time the suns set and the streets grow impatient with unknown dangers. During those moments of utmost weakness, she lets the latch lift only a hair in her mind. She clings to the memories of Galen’s strong arms holding her as he read her the most fascinating of stories from books bound in old leather. If she had never been born, Jyn sometimes wonders, would the galaxy have granted her a small bit of happiness like those hazily warm childhood memories brought?

The sobs would threaten to choke her as she bit them down.

_______

They lock her in a cell with another prisoner who makes it their goal to show the newcomer who has superiority amongst the two. Unfortunately for Jyn, her hands are freshly scraped raw from a first day’s work when her cell mate decides her first ten minutes are the best chance to establish dominance. Her stinging knuckles blaze as she lands a few hits, pushing her smelly cellmate back onto their equally disgusting bunk.

“I don’t want to fight with you.” Her fists are poised in front of her like Maia once taught her so many years before, elbows tucked and ready to throw a hit if needed. 

“Then give me your blanket.”

If the cost of peace was to forfeit her only current means of warmth, then Jyn could survive that decision longer than Wobani’s rigid environment itself.

_______

Having a hand that was warm and secure holding Jyn upright as dust falls on their heads as they scurry for the temple’s entrance is what helps pull Jyn from the buzzing shock in her mind. A blind man’s chorus of prayers filters through her ears as she watches from the sky as everything she had known as a child soldier - the temple, her former caregiver, her desert with the chilled night air - sweeps out from under the hull of the ship in a gust of green and fire. Fingertips shake numbly against the glass as Cassian pulls them into hyperspace. The glass grows cold under her hands as the red turns to blue streaks mixed with white. Jedha beats like a pulsing beat in her chest, flooding her senses until it reaches her fingertips.

_______

He will not stop coming back for her and it continues to perplex Jyn, who is so accustomed to the sting of betrayal she has barred herself from anyone who grows close. But Cassian is persistent in proving something - either to herself or himself, she is not sure - every time he finds her sulking in a corner of the hangar before they leave for Scarif, or when she is in actual danger.

She sees him smile - truly, brightly - when they are granted access to pass through the shield gate. Her fingers grip his arm for a whisper of a moment, but then let go.

_______

Years later when they share quarters on Hoth, Jyn discovers she is probably the only person in the entirety of the galaxy incapable of cooking herself a proper meal.

“No one can live off of ration bars and gelatin nutrition cubes forever,” he argues on rare night spent at the same time on base. Their missions for once end at the same time to allow them a few hours of time on base. Cassian spends it cooking and Jyn takes the extra down time to hunt down a fresh pair of truncheons. Her last ones had been confiscated by a Stormtrooper when she had the misfortune of being out past Yondu’s curfew.

His hands are secure and warm as he stands behind her, guiding her where each ingredient from the rations they collect go where. Unlike every other pair of hands that have touched Jyn throughout her life, his are warm. They are riddled with scars just like hers, too. It is something they respect about the other, like the other marks they uncover on each others’ skin in the more private hours of their rare overnight reunions.

Like learning to let him return for her despite every instinct in her body telling her otherwise, Jyn slowly learns to trust the warmth that someone can bring into her life. It comes slowly, something coveted and safe for her and Cassian alone to navigate as they pull the blankets over their shoulders and huddle under for the night.

She learns to trust his palms lying against hers as their lips kiss their way down each other’s skin; when he hides a hand in her pocket because their entwined fingers freeze in the cold air of the halls sometimes; when she wipes the blood from his knuckles and holds him close as the weight of his assignments sink into his bones.

For so long they had craved the softness of another, but now they were terrified of losing the contact between the other. She had starved for it since her childhood was stolen from her. He had grasped for it since the first time he held a blaster in his little hands as a boy, fresh from losing his family.

It seemed, that along the years of fighting, they found what they were looking for.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments - pos or neg - always appreciated! - H :)


End file.
